Social Media

The Somebodies vs. the Nobodies: The Fate of the Digital Underclass

In the world of paid digital music downloads, there’s iTunes, Amazon MP3, maybe the Zune Marketplace and eMusic a rung or two lower on the industry ladder. The rest seem to comprise the land of the unspoken. Even Microsoft’s efforts and the indie fave eMusic are susceptible to falling into insignificance. After all, the music industry as a whole, as with virtually any market of capitalist design, tends to support winners. The tracks go where the traffic is. Most of the time anyway. Enough for the strongest of players to claim ubiquity and permanent and unchallenged staying power, and for those underneath to struggle for breath.

You might wonder why it is that I raise a point raised so many times before. The health of the music industry has been opined over ad nauseam, and to do so once more is to toss tired copy on a pile of wasted wordplay, right? Well, it depends, really. The story of the digital sales model is far from complete, and with new developments happening in the land of Apple and Amazon, as well as a steady flow of stories occurring along the fringe of the market, there still is room to press points further along and observe the space from underrepresented perspectives.

The last 24 hours or so, for example, have brought items having to do with a Napster letter addressed to shareholders, in which it notes that it is “open to a sale,” according to Joseph Weisenthal of PaidContent, as well as something or other to do with recently launched LimeWire MP3 Store and a marked 100% growth in its music catalog, to a mere 2 million in total, as noted by Jacqui Cheng of Ars Technica. These you might think to be insignificant. And taken as they come, I would admit that they are not very impactful. But if you consider them to be the newest round of pockmarks in the middle- and lower-class digital music scenes, they add to the subtle signs emerging each season that tell us the market’s bottom feeders are not long for this world.

Is that a good thing? Well, only the best survive, yes? Sure, ideally. It’s hard to say who would be left standing. Rhapsody? Maybe. The Zune Marketplace? That’s quite a variable at this point. Microsoft doesn’t seem to be “in it to win it.” On the upside, the loss of such actors - if indeed they do expire in the next year or two or three - would perhaps uncomplicate things more. Too many choices can be more detrimental than few in some cases.

But, just for kicks, imagine a world that doesn’t have the spread of choices that we have today. If we start to see Napster, LimeWire, et al., start to drop like flies, what’s to say the consumer will really benefit? Those interested in music subscriptions, say, may no longer have such options. And labels that currently opt for one outlet or another due to variations in revenue agreements, might have to succumb to less advantageous contracts elsewhere. Which could hurt their bottom line. And though more musicians are taking an entirely solo route to promotion, the role of the studio, big or small, remains important. The music industry is busy enough as it is with a small set of great sounds and a vast amount of non-sellers. Some editorial is a good thing.

Granted, there are quite a number of ifs to take into account as things in the digital industry progress, but it's certainly worth contemplating its evolving dimensions. It’s not been a decade since music downloads became “popular,” and already we’ve seen it balloon, we’ve seen its squeezed, and we’ve even seen it begin to consolidate.

Some might argue that where one gets his or her downloads won’t matter much. But I disagree. Businesses in a complex market such as media move to higher ground at the expense of others. And the “others” don’t simply get to continue on when left behind. So just know this. It may now seem purposeless to quibble over the failed and the failing. But if all but a few disappear, the consumer experience that might have been - that you can get what you want, how you want - probably won’t be realized. And that’s a shame if proven true. If any paradigm shift of modern making in the media world could be taken closest to an ideal, it is the convenience of the digital music download.

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